Tag Archives: necromunda

Author: Stephen Hupfer
This was originally going to be an article dedicated specifically to The Prodigy’s – The Fat of the Land, but after having a chat with Sophie about how good Music for the Jilted Generation is as well, I thought I’d encompass both albums. Seeing as it’s Cyberpunk Week at Corehammer, we will tilt our hats to the ultimate Cyberpunk soundscape artist and take a trip down memory lane.

The year is 1995. Johnny Mnemonic, Waterworld, Tank Girl, and Judge Dredd have all hit the theatres. On top of these high-tier films sits the ultimate film of all time, Hackers. Now, I know this is not a Hackers spotlight, but it is my favourite film and it happens to include the tracks “One Love” and “Voodoo People” from the album Jilted Generation, which was released a year prior, so I had to give it a spot. Whenever “Voodoo People” comes on when I’m not watching the film, all I can picture is rollerblading on the run from cops in New York City. This album doesn’t sit as high for me as Fat Of The Land, but it definitely still has some major hits.

Note: that heavy-ass riff in “Their Law” makes you want to crack someone’s head with a beer bottle and get involved in a 200 mph car chase. Continue reading →

The start of my true love affair with miniature wargaming started with this box.

In 1994 I was part owner of a gaming store with some older, more mature, gaming friends of mine. I was in my early 20’s and playing in a straight edge hardcore punk band called, Halfmast. We were an unlikely group of game store owners: a chemical engineer (our chief investor), a mid-sized retail chain store manager, one of his employees, and myself – an irresponsible punk rocker. We opened the store on the tails of the first big wave of Magic: The Gathering hype. With all of the money we made selling M:TG in our first 6 months we had paid off the chemical engineer’s investment and had a pile of cash `to be invested into another game line. The distributors were pushing a game called Warhammer really hard, and we threw our all of our nested profit into it. Then we did it again with 40K. I started an army for both systems but didn’t fully fall in love with either until a new game dropped called, Necromunda…. Continue reading →

Distorted Japanese neon signs, reflected in the pooling rain on a Shinjuku sidewalk. High tech low lives, mirror shades, cyberspace decks, smart drugs, riding on light, neural data jacks, androids, replicants & and the infinite possibilities of technology. This was the future I signed up for and it was glorious.

Once again it’s time for a week of themed posts over here at the mighty Corehammer. Our Seven Nights Of Samhain theme was pretty successful last Halloween and it was a great opportunity to throw the doors wide open and invite some friends and allies to get involved. We are doing it all again this week and the theme is something thats been on my mind a lot these past few weeks, CYBERPUNK!!! With shows like Altered Carbon and Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams popping up in recent months alongside the new Bladerunner movie and Akira turning 30, I figured it’d be an appropriate time to don our disheveled trench coats and step outinto the hard rain of Neo Tokyo to take a look at yesterdays vision of tomorrow.

Any nerds who grew up in the 80’s will be familiar with the Cyberpunk juxtaposition of High Tech/Low Life. With it’s strong aesthetics, punk sensibilities, class politics and speculations on technology Cyberpunk caught hold of a lot of imaginations and inspired an enormous amount of radical art, literature, gaming and cinema. If you’re reading this blog it’s a reasonable assumption that you’re already familiar with genre benchmarks like William Gibson, Phillip K Dick, Akira, Bladerunner and so on…but what else?

Over the course of this week we’ll be taking a break from our regular content to probe the matrix by looking at some of the movies, music, games and ideas that contributed to Cyberpunk as a subgenre and it’s legacy in 2018.There’s also a new episode of Dungeonpunx in which the guys try to get their heads around cyberpunk by watching Johnny Mnemonic …..

Massive shout out to everyone who reached out and got involved. Check out Andrew Scully’s awesome SCUM poster at the top of the page and be sure to follow his work on Instagram @scullcomixinternational I really appreciate all your efforts. We’ve got some great stuff for you this week..

I discovered Guilt Ritual by accident earlier this year when I got talking to frontman Stephen Hupfer about some other nerd shit. Guilt Ritual are cool and sound like all the good bits of 90’s metallic hardcore with none of the bullshit. This interview is taken from my zine Harder They Fall issue 4 which will be up for pre-order in January. That issue also features interviews with Tom Pimlott, Ill Natured, Payday, Firm Standing Law, Insist plus loads of the mad shit that I write at 3 am when I’m deprived of rational thought and sifting through the rubble of my existence to determine exactly where where my life went wrong. Cool. Anyway, here’s Stephen….

When I was younger I listened to a lot of Ramones, Korn and Eminem and had no idea what hardcore was. When I got to high school (2005) I became friends with this kid Jordan who was a year older than me. We were linked up due to our mutual hobby Magic: The Gathering and him wearing goth chain pants that I thought were so sick. One day he gave me a couple CD’s (Set Your Goals – Reset, The Warriors – War is Hell, & Bane – The Note) and told me about these concerts that’d happen every Friday in our town. I thought Bane sucked and The Warriors were the sickest thing I’d ever heard. I went with my new found pal down to this bar and saw 100 Demons & Since the Flood. I was really surprised to see a bunch of kids that were older than me that I went to school with moshing and just beating the shit out of people. For whatever reason hardcore was like the cool thing at my high school. Continue reading →